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The
Dog Days of Summer

By Howard Nusbaum, President, ARDA

For many traveling families, summer vacations have a lasting impact on childhood
memories. For parents, building vacation memories with our kids is an important
touchstone – it is shared family time that creates emotional bonds and special
memories for the entire family. And most adults look back on their earliest
vacation memories with affection. To get
the other side of the story, U.S. Travel’s Project: Time Off Coalition recently
held a few focus groups that poll kids, asking what they think about their
parent’s travel habits.

This comes on the heels of multiple
surveys and research indicating that many Americans don’t use all of their
vacation days each year—that’s 429 million people, to be exact! It is a trend
that has put up alarming numbers over the past decade despite evidence proving
that vacations are good for your relationships, job performance, mental stamina
and overall health. The Project: Time Off Coalition has launched several
initiatives to buck this trend, and we’re hopeful the focus groups will lead to
better understanding the disconnect between needing a vacation and actually
taking one.

With only two weeks left of the official
summer season, many of you are either stealing away to enjoy the last few precious
days or are already looking back on your vacation with fondness and longing. I
invite you to take the #vacationpledge
and share a favorite memory about what keeps you traveling every year!